dispatches from the british road

The Wild Wild West. It always impresses me how the most fun and memorable travel experiences seem to pop out of the less glamorous aspects of a trip. After spending our Sunday at an eccentric environmental boondoggle known as the the Eden Project and then on a gorgeous hike along the coastline, we headed toward the hostel Stella had booked for the night. They had a firm check-in deadline of 9 pm, but we had plenty of time. I drove, Stella navigated. As the roads narrowed and other cars grew fewer and farther between, Stella's instructions became equally sparse. After a very long spell on the same winding road without a word from my copilot, I asked for an update on our progress, and Stella informed me that she was no longer sure we were going the right way. I pulled over and looked at the GoogleMaps printout with the directions to our hostel, and any doubts about Stella's navigational abilities quickly went away. I gazed in disbelief: almost a full page of instructions with no route numbers or street names at all, just turns and distances. The map portion was equally unhelpful: our route meandered through a cobweb of unnamed back roads. Only the occasional intersection was labeled with what I could only assume were the names of some very, very small villages. Where there are no street names or numbers, I quickly realized, Google is of little help.

There was only one way to connect the directions with real life. Each intersection we came upon had a signpost with the mileage to various villages, and some of the names matched up with places on the map. Thus, at the next junction, we picked the name of a village we knew was in the right direction and headed toward it. (I should stress that I'm using the word "village" only for want of a better term- often there was no sign of a church or pub, just a handful of country homes around a junction.) Many of the roads were only inches wider than our tiny rental car, and the overgrown brush on either side whipped the doors and side view mirrors. At times we encountered bogglingly steep grades and curves that had me praying no cars were coming in the other direction. Other stretches had tree cover dense enough virtually to block out the light of the late-evening sun. Eventually we came to a place called Portloe, with stunning views of the ocean far below. An elderly man with a hairy neck and long, caramelized fingernails was having a smoke outside of the local inn. The "No Vacancy" sign left me scratching my head as to who the hell takes their vacations out here. We asked him for directions, and within a minute I could tell he hadn't even heard of where we were going and was just interpreting our map for us. ("Take this road and follow your nose until you get to Portholland," he intoned in a vaguely Irish-sounding accent.) By this point it was past 8:30, so I extricated myself from the conversation as politely as possible, rolled up the window and continued on.

I don't know when it happened, but sometime before Portloe, we started having fun. It was a ridiculous, completely unexpected challenge. The scenery was amazing, and we laughed at our predicament and at the ludicrousness of tourism in this kind of place. We rolled into the Boswinger YHA hostel at 8:52 pm. "I was wondering if you were going to make it," said the teenager working the late shift at reception. I asked him if there was a pub around, and his smile told me that I was silly even to have entertained the idea. We did have a lovely walk, though, among some cows and the distant sound of surf and the fading light of a long summer evening:


Fun with Placenames. One of the fun little bonuses of being a Bay Stater in England is seeing the places that many of the towns in Massachusetts are named for. Up until now I hadn't noticed any underlying relationships within the names, except for the one-off correspondence between the two university towns named Cambridge. In Southwest England, though, I got a whiff of a pattern: I found Dartmouth, Plymouth, Falmouth, Truro, Barnstaple (yes, that's a "p"), and St. Dennis. If you're not from Massachusetts, or if you share my home state but aren't particularly observant, these are all the names of (or are close to the names of) towns on or near Cape Cod. Given the geographic similarities, I can certainly see the Cape reminding the early British colonists of Cornwall, so I doubt it's a coincidence.

And on an entirely random note, here's my nominee for the most deprived-sounding region of England: junction 14 on the M4 motorway leads to the towns of Hungerford and Wantage.

Wales. I had never been to Wales before, so Stella agreed to add it on at the end so that I could get my card punched. The Welsh language is alive and apparently much more viable than Cornish; the road signs turn bilingual as soon as you cross the border, and at least one radio station was utterly incomprehensible. Though the capital city of Cardiff is close to the border, we decided to pass on it due to concerns about traffic and testimonials to its relative unWelshness.

Instead, we headed for Caerphilly Castle, which is now right in the middle of a Cardiff suburb of the same name. When it was built in the 1200s, the castle was not only one of the world's largest, it was also at the cutting edge of castle technology, with a "concentric" design featuring multiple moats, walls, and battlements. The castle was built to defend Gilbert de Clare, an English lord, against Llewelyn the Last, the last Welshman to rule Wales. (Incidentally, Clare College in Cambridge is named for one of Gilbert's daughters, who saved the college from an early financial ruin.) Shifting alliance quickly destroyed the rationale for the castle's existence; it was left to rot and pillaged for stone until an early-twentieth-century restoration project. Here's a shot of the castle, with its very own leaning tower on the right side:


A Special Mention. I will conclude the tale of our road trip to the Wild West of Britain with an acknowledgement of another very special companion: Michael Jackson. The UK is also mourning the King of Pop (as is Vietnam, I'm sure), and it was a nostalgic treat to hear his old hits on the radio mixed in with the trashy dance music that generally fills the airwaves here. RIP, Jacko.

pirates and palm trees: this is england?

Penzance – I have made it to Penzance, and yes, there are pirates. I am at the end of Cornwall, the long finger of land that is Britain’s southwesternmost extremity, on a road trip with my regular traveling companion (and fellow WWOOfing enthusiast) Stella. We originally had a larger posse, but due to a confluence of events—including an unexpected rash of centipede hatchings that is keeping a biologist friend in lab for the weekend—it’s just the two of us. Cornwall has a reputation as a place apart from the rest of England, and there’s no better testimony to that fact the bizarre and alarming existence of palm trees here. And just as Salem, Massachusetts has embraced and profited from its witches, so has Cornwall’s largest town capitalized on its pirates. We unwittingly timed our arrival here with Mazey Day, Cornwall's traditional midsummer festival, and there are pirate costumes and skull-and-crossbones banners aplenty. The local pop music station goes by the name of Pirate FM.

Pirate antics aside, Cornwall is as serious about its regional identity as anywhere I have seen in the UK except for Scotland. The Cornish flag—a vaguely pirate-like white cross on a black field—is much more popular than the Union Jack, just as I saw far more of St. Andrew’s cross in Edinburgh. At the Mazey Day festival, vendors sell cards featuring doctored photos of Gordon Brown and Barack Obama holding oversized pasties, the region’s culinary gift to the rest of Britain. As we drove in toward Penzance, we heard a Pirate FM DJ interview a representative of the Cornish Language Partnership at its festival booth. The government-funded Partnership tries to preserve the Cornish language by offering courses in it, much like in parts of western Ireland where state subsidies are trying to keep Gaelic from disappearing. We stopped by their booth and picked up their free “Cornish for Beginners” brochure. Despite my enthusiasm for languages, this kind of enterprise strikes me as a fool’s errand. As my Cameroonian friends reminded me not long ago, people will talk the way they want to talk, and one can no more hold back that tide than command the waves to halt.

Speaking of waves, we also took an expedition out to Land’s End, the point where Britain finally surrenders to the Atlantic. Once you get past the tacky and overbuilt tourist facilities, it’s a marvelous landscape of cliffs, blue water, and rolling heath:

quintessential cambridge experience #4: may week

The pinnacle of the social year at Cambridge is May Week-- which, as you should expect by now, is not in May and lasts considerably longer than a week. I've discussed the Cambridge institution of May Balls before, but here's a quick refresher, which I have lazily copied from my February 15 blog entry and pasted here:

"If you thought formal hall sounded decadent, you ain't seen nothing yet. May Balls are all-night parties put on by most of the colleges... and they are nothing if not celebrations of excess. Think of them as a cross between prom and Project Graduation, marinated in booze. Ticket prices vary widely, but a middle-of-the-road May Ball starts around £100 (about $145). The more prestigious balls are very hard to get into; the ball at St. John's College once made a Time magazine list of the 10 best parties in the world."

I attended two May Balls this year, one at my own Emmanuel College and the other at Jesus College, which I chose because lots of my Development Studies classmates are there. The timing was less than ideal, as they fell on back-to-back nights, but I know many May Ball warriors with far more exacting schedules than mine. To get a sense of what's involved in one of these bacchanals, pour yourself a glass of champagne and enjoy this photographic tour of the Emma May Ball, with the appoximate time each picture was taken.


7:45 pm: Dinner. Many balls offer "dining tickets," which allow you to start off your evening with a multi-course meal a la Formal Hall, for about £30 extra. Despite the general consensus that dining tickets are not worth it, given the copious quantities of food at no extra charge for the rest of the night, I decided to indulge just for the Emma ball.



11:oo pm: Texas hold 'em. Casino games are a May Ball staple. There's no real money at stake; instead, everyone gets an allotment of chips at the door, and those who are successful at poker, routlette or blackjack can cash in their chips for chances to win prizes like plasma TVs or plane tickets. Our poker game coincided with a port tasting in the same room, and James (to my right in this picture) was close enough to the port table that he could refill our glasses simply by swiveling around, not even needing to stand up. Needless to say, the decline in my poker performance was steep and severe-- no plasma screen TV for me!



12:30 am: Cornershop. Any May Ball worth its salt has a main stage with bands playing throughout the night, plus performances elsewhere on the college grounds by comedians, hypnotists, a cappella groups, and dancers. As I discovered at Williams and in Anchorage, these smallish venues tend to bring in bands that are either struggling to make it or washed up. Headlining the Emma ball was a British-Indian group called Cornershop, who are well past their prime and still coasting on the strength of their 1997 hit "Brimful of Asha." These one-hit wonders made the mistake of not saving their one hit for the end of their set, so shortly after the "Asha" was empty, the tent where they were playing nearly was too.



1:15 am: Dodge 'ems. Another essential part of the May Ball experience is carnival games and rides, which range from bumper cars (called dodge 'ems in Britain) to strength tests to ferris wheels. I had a car to myself, and after a full-speed collision with a car containing two of my friends, my butt got enough air that even the dodge 'em guy looked impressed. During the round after us, a piece of the ceiling came off and landed on some poor fellow's head, bringing back memories of that awful Boston tunnel accident. Fortunately this guy was fine- he needed some help out of the car, but I'm pretty sure it was because was blotto before he got in, not because of a concussion.



2:30 am: Hookah. The Ball brought in our friendly neighborhood purveyors of hookah and created a magical little space to chill under the branches of an ancient tree. For the uninitiated, a hookah (often used interchangeably with shisha) is a Middle Eastern water pipe used to smoke flavored tobacco. You can't see most of the pipe in this picture, but Ev (on the left) has the stem in his hand, and in the foreground you can see the blocks of charcoal that heat up the tobacco. At this point in the night, having somewhere to sit and relax was crucial, and I think the key to a successful May Ball is having lots of activities for different energy levels.



4:00 am: Silent Disco. I can't say I fully understand the appeal of Silent Disco, but apparently it's all the rage in Europe. Instead of grooving to the tunes supplied by a DJ, you get a personal set of headphones, which provide a small selection of channels with different types of dance music. When a particularly catchy song played on one of the channels, I would lift my headphones for a moment and could hear scattered people singing along amidst the sound of shuffling bodies and shoes.



5:50 am: Assembling for the "Survivors' Picture." Every May Ball has a "Survivors' Picture" for those who make it all the way to the end. There is also usually some modest breakfast food; Emma had gooey chocolate croissants from the Italian cafe across the street. After the picture was taken I walked home, slept for a few hours, and got ready to do it all again the following night at Jesus College's May Ball. What a life!

quintessential cambridge experience #3: bumps

This time of year is heavy with ritual in Cambridge, and among the finest of those rituals is May Bumps, a multi-day series of boat races on the River Cam. Every college at the University fields boat crews, as do the medical, veterinary and theological schools and Anglia Ruskin University. Both terms, “May” and “Bumps,” need some clarification. They “May” part is easier to explain: as in the case of May Balls, it’s a relic of an earlier time when the academic year was structured differently.

“Bumps” refers to the way in which boats—each with eight rowers plus a coxswain, who steers and yells out commands—advance in the rankings over other boats. The races are not timed, and as will be explained momentarily, many of the boats in a given division will not even race the entire course. In the Bumps, success is only about rank, and the way you improve your standing is to overtake (“bump”) the boat ahead of you. Roughly 18 boats race at a time, and prior to the starting cannon they line up in the order determined by the previous day’s rankings (or previous year’s, if it’s the first day), with about 1½ boat lengths of space between each one. If one boat bumps another, their race is over; both pull over to the banks to let the rest of their division go by, and on the next day’s race they swap places in the order. It’s also possible to “overbump”—if the 2nd boat bumps the 3rd, and then the 4th boat bumps the 1st, the latter two will swap places during the next go-around. At the end of several days of racing, the top boats in the top men’s and women’s divisions are crowned as “Heads of the River.” However, any boat can earn a bit of glory by winning “oars,” awarded to crews that bump other boats on four consecutive days.

The official May Bumps program claims that 15% of the University participates. It sounded unrealistically high at first blush, but then again it seems plausible that 15% of my friends and classmates are rowers. Though it is a great Cambridge experience, I never felt especially tempted to join a boat crew, perhaps because it’s famously demanding on participants’ schedules and sleep-wake cycles. I really enjoyed watching the races, though—a lot of people come out, and it’s a nice atmosphere. Here are a couple of the Emma boat crews with MCR members:


The Men's II boat- MCR friends Kevin and Pat are the two rowers on the far left.


The 4th-ranked Women's I boat. Fellow Ephs Catherine and Maggie are 2nd and 4th from right.

i meet bill gates

Bill and Melinda Gates were in Cambridge yesterday to receive honorary degrees, and they generously gave most of their morning to a Q and A session with about 200 Gates Scholars. The whole affair was organized almost down to the minute and had the feel of a protocol-laden diplomatic reception. Prior to the Q and A session, those of us on the Scholars Council were lucky enough to have about 15 minutes of mingling time with the Gates in a separate room. At one point we were standing in two circles, one around each of them, and I was in a position to hear both conversations. Bill was holding forth to me and a few others about the most effective treatments for malaria, while Melinda asked questions about life at Cambridge and whether we identified more with our colleges or as Gates Scholars. I thought it was an interesting testimony to their yin-and-yang approach to the foundation, which would come out in the Q and A session to come. Then there was a group photo, which I'll hopefully be able to post once I get it (we weren't allowed to bring our own cameras to any part of the event).

I joked to one of the Council members that it would probably be the only time in most of our lives when we would cause a hush to fall over a crowded room, but that's exactly what happened as we took our seats at the front of the hall a few minutes before the Gates arrived. They both gave a brief introduction to the work of their foundation, with Melinda expanding on their philosophy that "all lives have equal value" and Bill giving a rather abstract, Buffett-esque reflection on capitalism, wealth, and the failure of the market to account for the interests of the poor in medical research. Then they began taking pre-selected questions from Scholars in the audience. The first had to do with how Bill identifies which new technologies have the most promise. With a hat tip to luck, uncertainty and randomness, he predicted that robotics will be the next big, lifestyle-changing technological frontier.

The most interesting part of the exchange, though, was on the subject of their philanthropic work. Somebody noted that Warren Buffett wants his donation to the Gates foundation to be entirely spent down within 10 years of his death, and asked if the Gates would like their Foundation to live perpetually on an endowment or be spent down in the same way. Melinda was very adamant that they don't want the Foundation to live forever, in part because they don't know if their priorities will still make sense in a hundred years time. She then delivered the zinger of the day: "who knows what the big problems will be in 100 years-- maybe it will be climate change, maybe it'll be something the robots are doing."

Bill Gates strikes me as a hardcore utilitarian, and he said the new initiatives they consider is evaluated against the opportunity cost of their bread-and-butter vaccination work, which saves lives at the rate of about $2,000 per person. Of course, that spurred a lot of later discussion--mostly of the lighthearted-but-with-sober-undertones variety--among the Scholars about the tradeoff between funding our studies and saving children's lives. My living allowance alone, about £9,000, could have saved 6 or 7 kids, to say nothing of my tuition and fees. Of course, this kind of brutal analysis can be applied to just about anything, and you can very quickly destroy the rationale for everything you use money for that's not writing a check to UNICEF. (This is part of the reason I'm not a utilitarian.) I'm not convinced that Bill Gates personally believes the scholarship to be a good tradeoff, and he conceded that it's about the only thing that they do without a quantifiable impact.

It also occurred to me that the Gates Foundation is perhaps the closest thing a large, rich-world institution can get to being a "Searcher" in the Bill Easterly terminology of Planners vs. Searchers. Beyond keeping to their focal areas of global health, development and education, I really don't sense any methodological or ideological commitments. Melinda spoke to the Foundation's willingness to make risky bets, seemingly referencing a remark she made earlier about how Bill "bet the company" on Windows. (She worked for Microsoft before they were married.) One of the lesser-known aspects of their philanthropy is $100,000 micro-grants to scientists pursuing unproven avenues of research, which allow those scientists to see if the research is promising enough to seek bigger funding from other sources. According to Bill, if even one of their reviewers rates a research proposal as his or her favorite it gets funded, no questions asked. I think they are genuinely focused on what works, constantly on the lookout for innovative new ideas, and guided by the evidence. Bill Gates' thought process may sound rather bloodless, but it sure as hell works: the ruthless discipline that made him the world's richest man is now being turned against the problems facing the world's poor. If I were malaria, I'd be scared.

easter term dispatches

I meet Bill Gates Sr. Bill Gates père made his annual trip to Cambridge this week and addressed 140+ Gates Scholars following (surprise!) a big dinner at Wolfson College. He’s on the left in the slightly blurry shot above, along with the president of the Gates Scholars Society and the Vice-Chancellor of the University. (As an aside, the “Vice” part of her title is just a technicality; the official Chancellor is Prince Philip, the Queen’s husband, who has little involvement with the day-to-day administration of the University.)

The members of the Scholars Council were also invited to a luncheon with Mr. Gates and the other Trustees, but the seating arrangement and the late arrival of the VIPs conspired to prevent me from actually talking to him. Fortunately, he also attended a symposium in the Gates Room where a few scholars presented their research, and I managed to snag about 45 seconds of conversation during one of the breaks. It was about enough time to thank him for the note he sent me back in November and ask him a question about the Gates Foundation’s advocacy work in DC. We were standing, somewhat awkwardly, near one of the Gates Room’s two Macs. If it ever bothered him, he must be over it by now. He’s a giant of a man—I had to tilt my head upward at a pretty significant angle to make conversation—and at 83, he shows no sign of slowing down his activities with his son’s philanthropies.

The formal hall scoreboard. Following the brouhaha over my post about Cameroonian English, it was nice to see one of my blog entries get picked up in a friendlier environment. I just discovered that my “Ode to Formal Hall” was excerpted several months back on this website, which advocates for greater adoption of Oxbridge-style college systems at universities.

At the time I wrote that ode I had six college formals under my belt, and though I never had a numeral target, I’m proud (??) to report that I now have 18 conquests: Emmanuel, Peterhouse, Churchill, Christ’s, Trinity, Newnham, Homerton, Hughes Hall, Pembroke, Queen’s, Robinson, Magdalene, St. John’s, Gonville and Caius, Jesus, Darwin, Corpus Christi, and Selwyn. An MBA friend of mine is close to hitting up all 31 this year, but I don't know of anyone else who's in the same range.

During the above-mentioned luncheon with Bill Gates Sr., I was seated next to the provost of the Gates Cambridge Trust, who is basically the Cambridge-based CEO of the Trust. He also happens to be the president of Wolfson College, where the larger dinner with Bill Gates Sr. was held. He’s retiring next year and told me that “you have no idea how disconcerting it is to see your job advertised in the newspaper.” At one point during lunch the topic of my proclivity for formal halls came up, and I mentioned that I wasn’t sure if the Wolfson dinner should count, as it wasn’t technically a college formal. He told me, with a chuckle, that he didn’t think it should count and that I would have to come back another time. So I guess I have to take a ruling from the president of the college concerned as definitive, and the scoreboard remains at 18.